-Timeless-
by Shelkesamurai
Summary: My take and tale of the already dicey...difficult to follow...yet surprisingly lovable story of Warriors Orochi 3. Follow in the footsteps of my three protagonists; Nicole Seulara, a human woman from the not-so distant future, dragged into the past; Unari Okami, a mystical spirit of Fury, sworn to avenge her fallen Pack; and Chien Long, the Demon God's shadow.


Tokyo, Japan  
2020

Rain pattered against the glass windows as thunder rolled and lightning flashed outside. The standard thunderstorm in the middle of spring.

Safely nestled inside her office, toiled a woman who prized her curiosity over many things, such as...eating and sleeping. A bright lamp angled into a corner to light up the room, the woman was in the midst of translating her newest find, a priceless piece of ancient chinese literature that could've dated back nearly two milennia, kept preserved in a chemically treated, air-tight glass box. Stumped with a particular sentence, she sighed, resting her head in her hands and rubbing her eyes.

"Uuuuuuugggh...the Sima clan. Bunch o' daffy bastards..." she groaned, leaning back and glaring at the papers. "Make sense! I feel like I'm reading Tolkien!"

There was the sound of a door opening and a hearty chuckle from behind her, the woman spinning around in her chair.

"What's so funny?" she questioned.

The heckler revealed himself, two cups of hot tea in hand.

"You. I can hear you from my office across the hall." he said. "You're probably the only girl I know who'll refuse sleep to figure out what abunch of ghosts from the past are tryin' to tell ya."

The woman rolled her eyes, taking the mug. "That's because I'm the -only- girl you know."

The man placed a hand over his heart, feigning pain. "Agh! Dearest, Nicole! You wound me!"

A flash of lightning streaked across the sky, so close to the building it made Nicole jump. The man winked at her, pointing a finger. "Karma."

Nicole sighed, standing and turning away from her profoundly ancient texts, kept safe from her clumsyness by its glass shell. "Shut up, Benny."

She strode to a small couch that served as her bed, which sat in the middle of a would-be living room. Around the area, there was little more for furnishing than a coffee table and an entertainment center with a gaming console and an average sized television.

"So what brings you to my humble abode at two in the morning?" she questioned, taking a seat and sipping more of her tea.

Benny took a seat next to her, dropping his bag down and fishing something out of it.

"Just bringing back some old artifacts. Maybe not as old as your fish food over there, but still worth a look."

She took the plastic case from his hand, turning it over. "Dynasty Warriors 6?" she scoffed, shaking her head and smiling.  
"Where the hell did you find this?"

Benny shrugged. "Had to help Mom clean out the attic. You'd left a few of your old games at my place a few years back and I uh...never got the chance-"

"Never felt the -need-." Nicole interrupted.

"...however you wanna put it. I wanted to give it back, and I knew you'd be up since you've been raving about your newest find for a week."

Nicole chuckled. "Why'd you bring it?"

Benny shrugged. "I dunno...maybe in hopes you'd wanna play?"

"Benny...I don't play games like this anymore. You know that." she said, looking at her dusty entertainment center.

"Yeah, I know. High time you started again." Benny nodded, chuckling.

"If you insist. Did you bring any other games of mine? Not too interested in this one..." she sighed.

"What's wrong with Dynasty Warriors?" he said, looking a tad surprised and taking the game back from her to set up.

"It's kinda...a spit in the face to the original story. Not very realistic..." she grumbled.

"Nicole...listen to what you just said. It's a -videogame-. It's not meant to be realistic, and neither was the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was a work of historical fiction, remember?" he said, walking toward her television and popping the disk out of the case, slipping it into the console. "Plus, you kinda owe it to Dynasty Warriors. If you didn't grow up on those games, -you- wouldn't have ever pursued a career in translating ancient East-Asian texts for museums around the world."

Nicole frowned at him, Benny sighing. The man turned on her TV, grabbed a couple of controllers and set them on the table, proceeding to get on his knees and give her puppy dogs eyes.

"Nicole. Will you please play Dynasty Warriors with me? For nostalgia's sake?" he begged.  
The woman eyed him, squinting and tapping her fingers against her knee in irritation, which only made her friend make even sadder puppy eyes.

"Alright! Fine. I'll play Dynasty Warriors with you...for old time's sake." she sighed.

"Huzzah!" Benny cheered, hopping up onto the couch and grabbing his controller.

The sunrise was of no concern to the two as they played through the early morning and into the afternoon, reliving victories and defeats of battles they'd fought together years ago in their teenage-dom. From time to time, Nicole would nitpick about the story, but otherwise, she herself found the time playing to be enjoyable. The two stood up as they approached the sadly inevitable end of their favorite character's story arc.

"Come and face me! Come and face the great Lu Bu!" they both yelled, breaking into a fit of laughter and falling back onto the couch.

"Ooooh man, we're so duuuuumb!" Nicole exclaimed through giggles.

"Psh, you love it! Oh no look, it's that part where he's all sad! Still wish you could hug him?" Benny teased.

"Yeah, sure. He'd let me hug him right after he punted me across the yard..." Nicole said, rolling her eyes.

"Can you still play his theme on a guitar?" Benny questioned.

Nicole looked up at her roof, thinking hard about power chords and her old electric guitar. "Hmmmmnn...maybe? I haven't picked up a guitar in almost as long as I've played this game."

The two continued playing on into the evening, until they were both so dizzy they couldn't even control their characters without dozing off.

"Lu Bu...what are you doin'...Lu Bu...Staaaahp!" Nicole exclaimed, bursting into a giggle fit in response to running her character into a mountain side.

"I think it's time for you to get some sleep..." Benny offered.

"I will not stop until I have conquered all of China!" Nicole jeered, throwing her hands into the air.

"You -have- conquered all of China, we're playing the DLC missions now!" Benny said, laughing at her dorky display. "You're such a doofus."

Nicole stood up and puffed her chest out. "Why yes! I am! It is a great burden to bear, my doofyness!"

Benny rolled his eyes, saving the game and shutting off the console, grabbing his bag and opening his arms to hug his friend.

"You have my deepest sympathies and greatest respect for the weight you carry upon your doofy shoulders." he chuckled, turning to head out.

The two said their goodbyes, Nicole locking the door behind him and walking back into her living room. She eyed the ancient literature still on her writing desk, then looked to the old plastic case of her favorite all-time game and sighed.

"You'll both just have to wait..." she muttered, grabbing a sheet from under her couch and lying down. It didn't take long for her to fall asleep, the woman drifting off into her dreams, where she herself lived the fantasized histories of the figures she'd grown to admire over the years.

She awoke to a horrid cacophany of noise, the entirety of her office shaking. She was thrown from her couch and into her coffee table, the sleep-dazed woman scrambling to get up and stay standing despite the shaking. She was aghast at the sights outside her windows.

The entirety of her city was in flame, giant formations of rock jutting up from the ground and lava bubbling up in rivers from the cracks. Parts of the landscape itself suddenly sported much older architecture, the streets and buildings swarming with creatures from a nightmare. The most terrifying and unbelievable sight to behold, was the serpentine form of a giant snake-like creature, that spat fire at the surroundings.

Her building shook again, and she frantically tried to stay on her feet. She stumbled over to her table, where her protected ancient text had managed to not fly off the table yet, the woman snatching it up and placing it in her bag. The building continued to shake, as she charged out her door and headed for the stairway, driven only by fear for her life, as she had no idea what she was doing. Was this even reality? Could she still be asleep?

Willing herself to wake up served to only slow her down. Her legs couldn't find purchase as the floor buckled beneath her, the floor above her collapsing down on her head. In a fraction of a second she was buried by rubble, saved from death only by sheer luck.  
Dazed, she struggled to stand, dust clogging her throat and stinging her eyes. Her leg burned and she could feel warmth. When she looked down, her heart leapt in terror. The piece of ancient literature's case had shattered during her fall, the paper nearly disintigrated within her bag. Pieces of the case were lodged in her leg, and her blood stained what little of the page could've been read.

She looked out upon the disaster outside. The colossal snake creature had vanished, replaced by a menacing dark sky that flashed with red lightning. Below, a battle was raging, between figures who were dressed as soldiers from an ancient times and things Nicole could only describe as demons.

A roar pulled her from her reverie, fresh adrenaline pumping through her veins as one of the creatures from below charged at her, sword held high. She hobbled as best she could, another of the creatures appearing in front of her and gnashing its teeth. She fell on her butt, terror taking her.

"L-leave me alone!" she screamed, covering her face.

She was thrown to the ground by a wave of force, a bright light flying over her and smashing into the demons. Nicole yelped in a mixture of pain and fright as she was tugged off the ground and dragged along, the woman barely finding her feet.

"Chien jin!" a voice shouted.

The words just barely registered in her head.

'Move forward.'

Nicole forced herself to run, unable to really get a good look at her savior. It was a man, dressed in a manner that bordered on fantasy.

As victim and savior rounded a corner, they were greeted by more of the ashen skinned creatures that had tried to kill them. Her savior released his grip on her and charged, dispatching the demons with relative ease. He even seemed to be having fun with it. When all had fallen, he trotted back over to Nicole, nodding.

""Lái shàng!" he said, taking her arm again, albiet more gently, leading her her away from the dead bodies.

'Come on.'

Nicole couldn't help but wonder why he was speaking Chinese, an old dialect of Chinese at that. She didn't have time to judge though, a savior was a savior in a situation that seemed utterly impossible to be in.

The two had run for seemingly miles, repeating the same thing over and over, her savior dispatching any demon or otherwise that stood in his way. What made him keep dragging her along?

His pace finally slowed, Nicole having a chance to catch her breath. She'd failed to notice just how bad the bleeding was, her savior looking somewhat horrified.

"Nǐ Shì Liúxuè de..." he echoed.

'You're bleeding...'

Nicole wracked her brain for the right words. She knew what to say, but in what context would he understand? Would the language she'd been taught even register? She was a tad rusty on the details of the spoken bit.

"Yes...I bleed. No problem." she said uncertainly.

The figure raised an eyebrow at her. "Guess you hit your head pretty hard. Come on, we need to look at that leg once we're safe."

Without warning, the figure swept her off her feet and started jogging, soon to be joined by other mythically dressed individuals that fought off any and all that came toward them. Exhausted, in pain and utterly confused, Nicole settled for shutting her eyes to the frightening things going on around her, clinging to the man and hiding her face in his collar.

Bright lights and the sounds of howling wind peeked Nicole's curiosity enough to make her look up. The world around her had changed. Still in her savior's arms and moving toward what looked like a theatrical prop for a medical tent, she examined all around her. More lava and strange volcanic formations, figures dressed in the armor of ancient Chinese soldiers, some in more eccentric clothing.

She was laid down on a table, able to vageuly hear what her savior and another were discussing about her. Likely the state of her wounds. Her vision was blurry when the man returned to look at her.

"This is as odd for you as it is for me...trust me. My name is Sima Zhao." he said.

She hadn't realized he was trying to distract her until her leg erupted into firey pain, the woman letting out a startled yelp as a piece of glass was pulled out of her leg. She shot up to hit the would be "doctor", her savior swiftly using his arm as a bar to keep her down, grabbing her hand with his spare.

"Hey! Easy now. I told you my name, you tell me your's." he said, genuinly trying to keep her mind off the pain.

The second piece didn't hurt as bad, as she grit her teeth.

"Nnngh...agh...Nic...Nicole. My name is Nicole Seula-AGH!" she whimpered after the third, a piece that had stabbed particularly deep. "Y-you said...Sima Zhao...that d-doesn't make sense..."

Zhao stroked her hair in an attempt to comfort the delerious woman, raising an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

Nicole laughed harshly.

"S-Sima Zhao...lived...over a -thousand- years ago! You can't...you j-jus-" she was interrupted by another hiss of pain as a hot wet cloth that smelled heavily of herbs was pressed over her wound.

"So your saying that place we were just in? That was this place, over a thousand years in the future?" he said, genuinely puzzled, a curious expression on his face.

Nicole stared at him in disbelief, but then again, everything that had happened, time travel shouldn't have been so surprising. She let her head fall back against the table, covering her eyes with her arm to hide the tears welling up.

"This has gotta be some kind of nightmare..." she muttered in English, her words completely lost on Sima Zhao. "...wake up, damn it! Wake up..." she whimpered.

She remained silent after that, a pleasant numbness spreading through her leg as a pair of large leaves were pressed against her wound, her leg wrapped up in bandages.

Sima Zhao had remained at her side, waiting patiently till she felt up to speaking.

"You alive over there?" he questioned.

"This has to be some messed up dream..." Nicole sniffled, letting her arm fall to her side.

"Ya know...I thought the same thing when Kaguya brought me back from the brink of death. That giant snake you probably saw? I was dumb enough to try and fight it head on...and she saved me at the last second, dragging me...back in time." he said.

"You're honestly telling me you're -the- Sima Zhao, of ancient China, who traveled time and just happened upon me before I was killed in the future?" she said, scoffing.

"Yes, I am. Look around you uh...Nic Ole Sool. Can you prove me wrong?" he asked.

Nicole pardoned the butchering of her name, shaking her head, glaring up at the roof of the tent.

"I know it's hard to take in...even I sometimes think I'm still dreaming and that some point I'll wake up." he muttered. "For now though...accept that this is as real as it gets. That creature, the Hydra, wants to tear this world apart, and he's doing it through all of time itself. So c'mon, pull yourself together, Nic Ole Sool."

"Niasara." she said sharply.

"Huh?"

"Nia. Sara. Just call me Niasara...easier to pronounce."

"Alright, Niasara. Welcome to the fight." he said, patting her on the shoulder and staying at her side till she fell asleep.


End file.
